2018 election analysis: Partisan balance of state legislative chambers
Updated 10:00am EST, December 28, 2018
This content is part of Ballotpedia's analysis of the 2018 midterm elections. For comprehensive election results, click here.
Six state legislative chambers changed partisan control after the 2018 midterm election, all from Republican to Democratic control. Democrats and Republicans ended up splitting control in one Democratic-held chamber—the Alaska House of Representatives.
With the six Democratic pickups (4 senate chambers and 2 house chambers), and the Alaska House split between the parties, Republicans now control a total of 61 state legislative chambers (32 senate, 29 house), and Democrats control 37 (18 senate, 19 house).
Regular elections were held in 87 of the nation's 99 state legislative chambers. Heading into the election, Republicans controlled 67 of 99 legislative chambers—36 senate chambers and 31 house chambers.
The pickups include:
- In New Hampshire, both the House and Senate flipped from Republican to Democratic control. This ended the Republican state government trifecta (where one party controls both chambers of the legislature and the governor’s office). Incumbent GOP. Gov. Chris Sununu (R) was re-elected.
- In New York, the Senate flipped from Republican to Democratic control. This gave Democrats a trifecta, as they retained control of the House and the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, won reelection. This is one of six trifectas Democrats won in 2018.
- Colorado Democrats took control of the Senate, flipping the state from divided power to trifecta control for Democrats.
- Maine Democrats won control of the Senate and the governor’s office, assuming trifecta control. Democrats retained control of the state House.
- Minnesota replaced one Democratic governor with another, and the House changed from Republican to Democratic control. But the Senate remained in GOP hands.
Historical context:
- The Democrats’ flip of six legislative chambers is the most since the Party took control of seven chambers in the 2012 elections. In that year, Democrats flipped two state Senate chambers and five state Houses. Interestingly, four of the chambers which switched control in 2012 were the Minnesota House, New Hampshire House, Maine Senate, and the Colorado Senate.
- The six chambers that changed partisan control this year is less than midterm elections in 2010 and 2014. Twenty-two state legislative chambers flipped in 2010 (all but one went from Democrats to Republicans) and nine chambers switched control in 2014 (all went to Republicans).
See also
- 2018 election analysis: State government trifectas
- 2018 election analysis: Incumbents defeated in state legislative elections
- 2018 election analysis: State legislative supermajorities
- 2018 election analysis: Partisan balance of governors
- 2018 election analysis: State government triplexes
- 2018 election analysis: Control of the U.S. House
- 2018 election analysis: Control of the U.S. Senate
- 2018 election analysis: Was 2018 a wave election?
Footnotes
| |||||||||||